My Booky Wook [Hardcover]

‘The most talented stand-up comedian to emerge in Britain this decade, Brand combines Eddie Izzard’s rare ability to carry a whole crowd along on an audacious flight of comic fancy with the carnal magnetism of the young George Best. Audiences leave a Brand performance not just entertained but actively debauched by his catalogue of erotic misadventure.’

(Daily Telegraph )

'My life is a series of embarrassing incidents strung together by telling people about those embarrassing incidents.'Russell Brand's scandalous reminiscences were always going to have a literary flavour. But nothing you've heard him say on stage, radio or TV can prepare you for the impact of this beautifully written memoir. From his troubled childhood in Essex and his addictions to drink, drugs and sex, to his giddy rise through the world of entertainment, this is not simply a story of fame but of redemption, achingly and hilariously honest throughout.

Russell Brand is a comedian, journalist, TV and radio presenter and actor. He has won numerous awards including Time Out's Comedian of the Year, Best Newcomer at the British Comedy Awards, Best TV Performer at the Broadcasting Press Guild Awards, Most Stylish Man at GQ's Men of the Year Awards and the Sun's Shagger of the Year.

On the morning of April Fools' Day, 2005, I woke up in a sexual addiction treatment centre in a suburb of Philadelphia. As I limped out of the drab dog's bed in which I was expected to sleep for the next thirty wankless nights, I observed the previous incumbent had left a thread of unravelled dental floss by the pillow - most likely as a noose for his poor, famished dinkle.

When I'd arrived the day before, the counsellors had taken away my copy of the Guardian, as there was a depiction of the Venus de Milo on the front page of the Culture section, but let me keep the Sun, which obviously had a page 3 lovely. What kind of pervert police force censors a truncated sculpture but lets Keeley Hazell pass without question? `Blimey, this devious swine's got a picture of a concrete bird with no arms - hanging's too good for him, to the incinerator! Keep that picture of stunner Keeley though.' If they were to censor London Town they would ignore Soho but think that statue of Alison Lapper in Trafalgar Square had been commissioned by Caligula.

Being all holed up in the aptly named KeyStone clinic (While the facility did not have its own uniformed police force, the suggestion of bungling silent film cops is appropriate) was an all too familiar drag. Not that I'd ever been incarcerated in sex chokey before, lord no, but it was the umpteenth time that I'd been confronted with the galling reality that there are things over which I have no control and people who can force their will upon you. Teachers, sex police, actual police, drug counsellors; people who can make you sit in a drugless, sexless cell either real or metaphorical and ponder the actuality of life's solitary essence. In the end it's just you. Alone

Who needs that grim reality stuffed into their noggin of a morning? Not me. I couldn't even distract myself with a wank over that gorgeous slag Venus de Milo; well, she's asking for it, going out all nude, not even wearing any arms.

The necessity for harsh self-assessment and acceptance of death's inevitability wasn't the only thing I hated about that KeyStone place. No, those two troubling factors vied for supremacy with multitudinous bastard truths. I hated my fucking bed: the mattress was sponge, and you had to stretch your own sheet over this miserable little single divan in the corner of the room. And I hated the fucking room itself where the strangled urges of onanism clung to the walls like mildew. I particularly hated the American grey squirrels that were running around outside - just free, like idiots, giggling and touching each other in the early spring sunshine. The triumph of these little divas over our indigenous, noble, red, British squirrel had become a searing metaphor for my own subjugation at the hands of the anti-fuck-Yanks. To make my surrender complete I was obliged to sign this thing (opposite).

I wish I'd been photographed signing it like when a footballer joins a new team grinning and holding a pen. Or that I'd got an attorney to go through it with a fine tooth comb: `You're gonna have to remove that no bumming clause,' I imagine him saying. Most likely you're right curious as to why a fella who plainly enjoys how's yer father as much as I do would go on a special holiday to `sex'camp' (which is a misleading title as the main thrust of their creed is `no fucking'). The short answer is I was forced. The long answer is this . . .